


To Live and Die Before a Mirror

by mamestuck



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate history on the meteor, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 18:39:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2120559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamestuck/pseuds/mamestuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"One magician demanded I show him an image of the love of his life. I rustled up a mirror."</p>
<p>-Bartimaeus, The Amulet of Samarkand</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Live and Die Before a Mirror

Rose lurked in the dim, industrial hallway of the meteor, mostly hidden by an over-sized conduit. She had Seen that Eridan would be passing this way in exactly seventy-two seconds; not that she relished the abuse of her powers, not that this counted as such, but even mere minutes of inconvenience that he posed to her were already too much. 

As her target passed by, she deftly reached out with a Thorn and snagged the heavy dupioni of his cape. A satisfying ripping sound reverberated through the unfurnished corridor.

"What the actual fuck?" Eridan spat, turning on a heel and glaring at Rose.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did your pointless garment catch on something?" she said, all sugar, having already palmed the Thorn up a sleeve of her god-tier shalwar. "That's a real shame."

"Don't you try gaslightin' me, bitch. Next time, keep your hands well enough to yourself!"

Rose turned up one corner of her perfectly-painted mouth. "My lady love said she nearly killed you. Lord knows why she didn't finish the job." Her eyes strayed down to Eridan's legs, stiff and clumsy robotic prosthetics nearly concealed by trouser and shoe, but for a narrow gap below the hem at the ankles. "I just wanted you to know that I will afford you no such courtesy and grant you no such concession. I have spent exactly long enough on this godforsaken rock to know the score. If you ever do so much as look sideways at me or one of mine, I will cut you down with immediacy and permanence. And you know what? Everyone will celebrate. Nobody wants you alive; at best, your presence is begrudgingly tolerated."

"I already lost the love a my life, ain't I suffered enough?" he asked, the whiny tone creeping into his voice grating against Rose's consciousness like rusty knives on a slate.

She barked out a single note of laughter. "What a farce! Not to mention a logical fallacy. You can't have lost the love of your life, when you are the only person that you have ever deigned to love in your entire, short, miserable life."

"You lying cunt!" he shouted, but Rose had already turned to go. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught him slumping to the floor, back against the metal wall, face in his hands. From this distance and angle, she couldn't discern genuine remorse from seething frustration, but she suspected the latter. She shook her head briskly and resolved to forget him until he inevitably became an issue again.


End file.
